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Disgruntled Science Policy Roundup 2016

It’s almost time for the 2016 Australian Federal Election, which also means it’s
time for an extra special double-dissolution edition of my science policy word
tantrum!

Labor and Liberal

Ah who cares.

Look, I don’t want to do the too-cool-for-school crap of saying the major
parties are exactly the same, because they aren’t. Spoiler alert: Labor is
probably a better science vote than Liberal. But not so much that I can be
bothered reviewing them separately.

The Liberals are obsessed with all things agile and innovation. But they have no
idea what that means, or how science fits into it. They seem to think startups
take a mere couple of years to reach success. They struggle to articulate what
a startup is, and why eg. hairdressers aren’t one. They don’t seem to understand
what it’s like to have an extremely viable business model that fails before it
starts because it doesn’t fall neatly into mining or property development. For a
party that’s meant to be all about business, they really seem to be at a loss as
to how to help businesses. Except obviously rentseeking, that being the entire
basis of their governance.

So they can’t conceive of science beyond making money off technology, and they
have no idea how people make money off technology. Meanwhile, funding is cut,
investment stops, and the smell of sovereign risk is in the air. Another term or
two of the Liberal Party might actually see the end of Australian science
altogether.

Labor like to give the knife a more gentle twist, giving passionate researchers
just enough hope and praise so that they’ll continue to work for free and pay
for their own supplies, just like the union movement fought for.

The cable tie that draws these two together is their complete, total, absolute,
abject lack of vision when it comes to the potential of Australians. I have
personally seen politicians from both sides be utterly shocked that Australian
companies still employ people who eg. solder things, or design solid objects, or
ship consumer electronics overseas.

This is obvious in their voices on the National Broadband Network, which is
almost never discussed as anything but a consumer product. It is apparent in
their involvement in the committee and debate on forcing ISPs to retain users'
internet activity. It permeates every aspect of their politics, it informs every
policy, it infects every budget.

Under the continued neglect of both parties, agencies have been reduced to empty
husks. The CSIRO now hires managers at a six-to-one ratio over scientific
support or researchers, because all they can do is churn money through
meaningless commercialisation initiatives instead of inventing technology to
commercialise. NICTA were eviscerated, haemorrhaging staff who simply could not
live with the uncertainty, our successive governments so reluctant to commit to
funding that they would rather leave tens of millions of dollars of valuable
equipment in the sea to rust.

The fact is, science is not going to swing votes in marginal seats for either
party, and this makes it invisible to both. It is the easiest part of the budget
to cut, and the laziest piece of policy work for either.

(I would like to make a special point of the fact that a policy of “science
funding at 3% of GDP” is pretty much what a six year old could come up with by
Googling “what is good science policy” for a class report. It has no currency.)

So yeah, who cares.

The Greens

Last time around, my qualified praise for the Greens focused on their science
policy (good), and their anti-science dogwhistling (bad).

These things still exist. The policy is there, it’s just as good as last time,
although not updating it suggests a little complacency on their part. The
anti-science sentiment still comes through in places, and I doubt it’s going
away any time soon.

But I feel like there has been a permanent, albeit subtle, shift in the attitude
shared by the Greens' parliamentarians. More and more I see technological
proficiency and scientific literacy informing their participation, and a great
example of this was Greens Senator Scott Ludlam’s work on the mandatory data*
retention policy committee. (*There is no such thing as metadata you weasels.)

This committee, and subsequent parliamentary debate, saw the two major parties
doubling down on a ridiculous regulatory scheme to retain the internet and phone
activity of every customer of every service provider in the country. Ludlam was
a lone voice who challenged the puerile analogies, the awful agendas, and the
blatant illiteracy of proponents of the scheme. He was the only parliamentarian
(and one of very, very few journalists) who went to any serious effort to (a)
understand the technological principles and (b) communicate them to voters and
the media without dumbing it down.

And when the legislation passed, rather than move on from a now-defunct media
opportunity, he turned his party’s organisational machine towards helping folk
in the community protect themselves.

This may seem like cloying praise compared to the rest of this article, but it
was damn good work and deserves a lot of credit. If the Greens do little else
but bring scientific literacy to senate committees, they’ll get my
recommendation every time.

Another interesting twist of politics was the Greens leader Richard Di Natale
partially breaking with his party’s opposition to genetically modified crops and
technology. (“Partially” because while he does not believe they cause health
risks, he is still opposed to the business practices around them.) Despite some
amount of frantic backpedalling that followed this, it is another sign that the
party leadership are willing to take some risks in order to dismantle some of
the anti-science attitudes they would have previously fostered.

Perhaps I’m slow to trust, but The Greens are still a bit of a wildcard for me
when it comes to science in parliament. However, it is absolutely clear to me
that their influence over the last three years has been positive for science and
technology overall, and they’re still the only elected party who are willing to
ensure that scientific knowledge informs Australia’s laws and policies.

The Men’s Science Party

A new party has emerged this cycle, a new party entirely dedicated to science!
And almost entirely dedicated to men!

The Men’s Science Party have an amazing set of detailed policies. I mean,
there’s a bit of a policy fractal thing
going on, but that doesn’t really matter. It’s good policy. The Men’s Science
Party campaign material, outside a circle drawn arbitrarily around social media,
seems pretty professional. I haven’t seen any Comic Sans or 90s era clipart yet.
That’s promising.

Now… the Men’s Science Party don’t actually say anywhere, explicitly, that
they’re a men’s science party. I just inferred that from the fact that 90% of
their candidates are men, most of their internal leadership is men, and they
appear to have absolutely no strategy for addressing this ludicrously
disproportionate representation. Let’s do the maths on what’s more likely: a
party who want to represent everyone fails this badly, OR a party who want
to represent only men accidentally let three women through.

Alas we have to do the maths on this ourselves, because when people asked them
directly about it, they did not respond particularly… well. In fact, what they
did do was evade the question and then cry “troll” at a number of women who have
been working tirelessly on promoting the importance of science policy,
regardless of party allegiance or discipline, for at least the entire eight
years I’ve known them.

This is seriously disappointing. Because they have the policy corner of the
triangle done. Their campaign machine is ready to go. But this party really need
to sit down and decide who they aim to represent, and actually work out how
they’re going to achieve that.

Or hey, they could just wing it with no particular measures to address
inequality in their own ranks, and hope that the biases that contaminate every
other aspect of politics, culture and the scientific world magically don’t apply
to their endeavour. Go ahead, try doing the same thing over again while
expecting a different result.

The Liberal Democratic Party

This is a party whose constitution literally requires candidates to
voluntarily void their bowels on the spot should they ever glance upon a
three-bladed wind turbine. Yes, photos count! Zero
science stars.

I apologise to anyone expecting anything so cultured as a moon
analogy. Although, in a wa—